Bốn hướng đột phá chính sách nông nghiệp, nông thôn và nông dân trong giai đoạn hiện nay

aused a fact that many of Vietnamese 
products had been excluded right at the beginning, narrowing the door for export of 
agricultural products. 
In fact, after 1 year of WTO accession, Vietnam’s agricultural products continued to 
sustain its market share. Moreover, besides the traditional markets, including China, 
ASEAN, Russia, East Europe, Vietnam has been able to penetrate the new and demanding 
markets such as the EU, Japan and the USA... By November 2007, Vietnam’s rice export 
turnover rose by 15% as against the same period, that of aquatic products up by 11.9%, 
coffee – up by 35.6%, and vegetables – up by 14.9%. In addition, many of Vietnam’s 
agricultural products gained benefits because of high export prices; for the first time, 
Vietnam’s export rice had the same (even higher) price with Thailand’s rice1. In 2007, 
Vietnam had 5 agricultural items whose export turnover surpassed the 1-million-USD 
export turnover/each, including: aquatic products (3.8 billion USD); wooden products (2.4 
1 Department of Trade in Services, Ministry of Planning and Investment: Report on implementation of trade – services 
plan in 11 early months of 2007. 
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billion USD); coffee (1.86 billion USD); rice (1.46 billion USD); and rubber (1.4 billion 
USD)1. 
According to forecasts, Vietnam’s market and turnover of agricultural exports can be 
expanded. For the China market, for example, Vietnam’s agricultural exports to this market 
may increase from 400-500 million USD/year (present) to 700-800 million USD, with the 
leading export items as rubber, cashew nuts, manioc powder. For the US market, Vietnam’s 
agricultural exports to this market still occupied 0.4-0.5% market share, this is a very small 
number as compared with the potentiality. For the ASEAN market, Vietnam’s exports 
would be from 400-900 million USD/year, the main items of which is rice. 
Vietnam must quickly overcome the barriers of agricultural exports: improving 
export quality and competitiveness, improving the information channels; and well engaging 
in building trade-marks and marketing and promotion activities; fostering and expanding 
markets, consolidating the traditional markets, especially having strong breakthroughs in 
large and potential markets like the EU, Australia, Japan, the USA and Africa. These 
responsibilities and tasks can not be given only to enterprises – the individual manufacturers 
and processors, but to entire import-export system, the associations, the industries, and first 
and foremost the State, specializing ministries and national strategy planning organizations. 
The organizations, enterprises and Government as well need to have an active, flexible and 
professional coordination. 
In particular, the recent price fevers pointed out the very weak system of macro-
management mechanisms and trade-related institutions, which are unable to catch up with 
requirements of international integration and modern market. 
For example, the high inflation and increased CPI in the recent time have created 
strong negative impacts on the poor rural households, because: the high prices of the group 
of food and foodstuff items – which account for 79% of the consumption structure of poor 
households. In addition, while the growth rate of output products was about 20-30%, that of 
input ones to serve agricultural production (such as fertilizers, pesticides, electricity, petrol, 
animal food...) went up much higher (40-50%). While the price of export rice was 1,000 
USD/ton, the price paddy should have been 8,000 VND/kg, yet the buying price of paddy in 
the Mekong river delta was only 5,400 VND/kg. The profit, if available, was largely fallen 
into the pocket of the merchants (granary owners). Or the coffee growers gained only 1.5 
USD out of 10 USD export value in the world market. In short, farmers were the ones who 
suffered the most and thus, unable to develop the agricultural sector strongly and 
sustainably. 
From this fact, we need to build and improve the macro-management institutions and 
well organize the market distribution mechanisms for sound implementation of import-
export activities. In the paddy and rice sub-sector, there needs to improve the following 
1 2007 sum-up conference on implementation of 2008 plan of the Agricultural sector in Hanoi, January 7th, 2008. 
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major organizations and institutions: i) Paddy farming households; ii) paddy and rice 
purchasing agencies; iii) cooperatives or associations of rice producers; iv) the State and rice 
import-export management offices. These organizations cooperate and control each other, in 
which the State is the centre (making the playing rules, managing, supervising and 
checking...). In context of highly increased rice price, there are opinions that the State 
should shift from quota-based management to import-export tax management, which will be 
better for rice producers and help stabilize the domestic rice market. 
4. Providing effective support to farmers in accordance with WTO requirements 
It is obvious that farmers are the most vulnerable people in the market mechanism. 
That is because of the competitive nature of the market, where the strong will become 
stronger while the weak will become weaker. Yet, production and agricultural products are 
compulsory and indispensable to the society. Even in developed industrial countries, there 
require strong financial supports for assisting and protecting agriculture. In reality, these 
countries have built highly protected barriers and provide strong subsidies to their 
agricultural products, which as a consequence caused many difficulties and losses to 
agricultural products of countries like Vietnam when entering the foreign markets. 
For Vietnam, it seems that we have not paid adequate attention to subsidizing our 
agriculture and farmers. Entering the WTO, it is forecasted that Vietnam’s agriculture and 
rural development will be badly affected due to poor competitiveness and low-level 
production, as above-said. Though the Vietnam’s agriculture can sustain one year after 
WTO accession, but for the long run, the Vietnamese agriculture is in danger of unstable 
development, and the Vietnamese farmers may become worn-out in the whirl of integration. 
So, the State needs to have specific programs and roadmaps to support agriculture and 
farmers, so that they can not only confront with but also become stronger, quickly adaptive 
to the new conditions and global environment. 
It is certainly that the subsidies, if provided, must be following WTO rules (that is, 
they must belong to the green box and yellow box)1. At present, Vietnam’s subsidies to 
agriculture are very small, unable to create strong breakthroughs in rural development. It 
seems that we have fallen into an extreme: instead of seeking for supporting sources, we are 
worrying about what are prohibited by WTO. In fact, the WTO restricts only the subsidies 
that distort market prices and only when the exports of certain products cause serious losses 
to similar industry of an import country, they are imposed antagonistic taxes. The size and 
potentiality of Vietnam’s supports to agriculture remain very large; the point is to correctly 
define the key points, to provide sufficient and effective subsidies. The supporting sources 
should be socialized and diversified, with strict investigation and control, ensuring supports 
provided to right persons. 
1 According to WTO rules, agricultural subsidies (except for export subsidies) can reach 10% GDP of the sector and, 
thus, Vietnam can spend not a small sum of money: 1.2 billion USD (compared with 12 billion USD of agricultural 
value) + 4,000 billion VND (from State budget) = 20,000 billion VND for subsidizing agriculture. Cited from online 
interview with ex-Minister of Trade Truong Dinh Tuyen, Vietnamnet dated 16 January 2008. 
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Attention should be paid to developing technical infrastructure and irrigation, 
expanding rural roads, providing training courses to improve people’s knowledge, making 
positive changes in the structure of rural labour; conducing studies, R&D activities, and 
applying scientific and technological achievements (new variety, techniques and new 
cultivation methods); providing subsidies for restructuring of agricultural production; 
financing environmental programs for assisting the difficulty-driven regions, supporting the 
direct producers... Subsidies should also be provided to narrow down the gap of living 
between the rural and urban areas, which can be done under the programs of “electricity, 
roads, schools and medical stations”. At present, this gap is tended to widen (which is about 
2.6 times, compared with 3.6 times of China). 
In addition, the State subsidies should be defined as the factors to facilitate and 
promoting the efficiency of investments made by various economic actors in agriculture. 
Though agriculture continued to occupy a large ratio in national economic structure, the 
State’s investments into this sector represented only 14% of total National State budget 
investments. Investments from FDI enterprises in agriculture stayed at a modest rate, about 
10.6% of total FDI investment projects and 6.5% of total FDI registered capital. In addition, 
the foreign investors in agriculture mainly come from Asia, not many from agricultural 
powers like the USA, Australia and Canada1. Investments in science and technology to 
serve agriculture are also very small, accounting for only 0.13% of GDP in this sector, while 
in other countries, the figure is about 4%2. If this ratio was doubled or one and a half higher, 
it would be very significant for the cause of agricultural and rural development in Vietnam. 
1 Department of Planning, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Vietnamnet dated 22/12/2007. 
2 WB (2007): World Development Report.